


Candles in the sky (fire on my skin)

by forgivenessishardforus



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, canonverse, idk - Freeform, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgivenessishardforus/pseuds/forgivenessishardforus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With numb hands, he stokes the fire. With frozen breath, he brings it to life. He allows the flames to melt him, stands close enough for their heat to burn. Even when his skin starts to sting and smart, he doesn’t step away. He welcomes the pain. Breathes it in, breathes it out. </p>
<p>That had always been his problem. Either he feels too much, or he feels nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candles in the sky (fire on my skin)

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to write a fluffy one-shot, and then...this happened. 
> 
> It's my first (completed) piece of Bellarke fanfiction, opinions are welcome!

_i_.

Octavia’s footsteps seem to echo as she strides out of the room, long after she’s out of sight. _Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump._ It takes him a moment to realize it’s only his heart, thudding in his ears.

She never once turned to look back. Somehow, this little fact hurts more than all the rest: he watches her leave and tries to remember how to breathe, while she walks away like there’s no reason to stay.

And he waits and he waits and he waits, watching the door that she left by. If she returns, he’d forgive her. If she returns, he’d hold her.

She doesn’t. Something inside of him stretches, breaks, concaves; splintered ribs puncture his lungs and through the cracks in the fractured cage, darkness seeps, as deep and empty as space.

Why do the people he loves always leave?

_ii._

The fate of the world hangs above her head, _again,_ and all she can do is look at the man beside her—her partner, her friend, her confidant, her something-that-can’t-be-put-into-words—and watch as the weight of his world crashes into his chest.

She can see it happen, the way his breath suddenly hitches like he can no longer draw air into his lungs. His muscles tighten, hands curling into fists, shoulders pulling in, and she’s seen this before, too: it’s not the first time she’s watched as he’s tried to turn himself to stone.

Her hand reaches for him, brushing gently against his skin, and he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s drawn deep inside himself, gone to a place she can’t reach, his eyes fixated unblinkingly on the place where Octavia had gone.

She moves in front of him, pulls his gaze down to hers, pulls his hands into hers, and holds him, grounds him.

“She’ll come back.”

His voice is hollow and lost. “What if she doesn’t?”

_iii._

The nights are cold. He finds a home in it. During the days they travel, miles of ground passing beneath the wheels of their rover, while at night they stop and set up camp on unfamiliar ground. And when the camp has fallen quiet and the fire has burned down to coals, he silently slips out of his tent and starts walking.

Destination doesn’t matter. He seeks only to live in the cold, to make it a part of him, to dull the sharp and broken edges where Octavia used to be.

A cloud of stars hangs suspended in the night sky, white and bright and sharp as needles; he imagines them piercing his flesh. Breathe in: let ice crystallize in his lungs. Breathe out: let the crystals float on the air. Breathe in and out, in and out, until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

He stands motionless in a clearing, staring at the cold and distant stars, until his fingers, toes, ears, nose turn numb. Until his chest stops aching. Until his blood is chilled and viscous in his veins. And then he turns and heads back to camp, snow crunching and creaking and squeaking beneath his boots.

With numb hands, he stokes the fire. With frozen breath, he brings it to life. He allows the flames to melt him, stands close enough for their heat to burn. Even when his skin starts to sting and smart, he doesn’t step away. He welcomes the pain. Breathes it in, breathes it out.

That had always been his problem. Either he feels too much, or he feels nothing at all.

_iv._

She finds the tent suffocating, sometimes. After three months of living under the endless sky, being surrounded by nylon walls, close and claustrophobic, she finds it hard to breathe. So she slips out the door flap and into the night.

The air is cold, crisp and clean in her lungs. She breathes it deep, welcomes its icy touch on her exposed skin, and then begins to walk, seeking a place to be alone.

The stars burn like candles in the sky. It reminds her of Polis, and of Lexa, a part of her past that feels like a dream, now, but that doesn’t stop it from putting an ache in her chest.

She finds a log to sit on and clears it of snow, staring up at the sky and thinking: thinking of how she had run and run and run, but the pain had caught up with her anyway; thinking of how she had lost herself in a woman who had both betrayed her and loved her, and the whole world had suffered. She thinks about how loss is a side effect of love, how pain is a side effect of caring, how she had tried to prevent the bad by avoiding the good; she thinks about how that loss and pain has made a home in her heart, part of her, and how she’s stronger for it.

Predawn light floods across the sky and the candles go out, one by one. She waits until the last one vanishes, and then returns to camp.

_v._

“Bellamy?”

He turns from the fire to see Clarke standing in the shadows. She walks towards him, dawnlight and firelight dancing across her face. Mesmerizing.

“You’re up early.” Her voice is soft as rain, cool on his burning skin.

“I haven’t slept yet.”

She looks concerned—nothing more than concerned, he’s sure. “Are you okay?”

For a second he considers blowing her off—his skin feels like it’s on fire but there’s still ice in his lungs—but this is _Clarke_ , his partner in all things, and he doesn’t want to strain the fragile, healing bond between them. “I miss her.” Words like thin ice, cracking beneath their own weight.

“I know.” She throws her arms around him, pulls him close, more comforting and warm and real than the fire at his back.

He allows himself to relax in her, burying his nose in her neck and one hand in her hair. She holds him and she holds him and she holds him and slowly, the darkness inside of him as deep and empty as space gets painted with stars.

Clarke had always been the one to balance out his extremes. She smells of smoke and salt and snow. An ocean to sooth his burns, a fire to keep him warm.

_vi._

Sometimes she wakes up gasping, a scream clawing at her throat. She wakes with images still graven on the inside of her eyelids: men and women and children and elders, gored and blackened and charred and poisoned. A thousand bodies, dead by her hand.

She stumbles from her tent, breathes the night air until her heart slows in its beating.

A shadow is sitting at the edge of camp, moonlight glinting off its hair. She sits silently beside him, arm brushing against his. His presence steadies her.

Somehow, he knows; he almost always does. “Nightmares?”

She nods, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I get them, too.”

Without prompting, he tells her: dreams of being in a cage with the bars closing in, of running through endless, concrete hallways, of watching the faces of his friends melt off their skulls; dreams of gunshots ringing off metal walls, of an explosion hot on his back, of hands around his throat, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m still there, trapped inside the mountain.”

Her hand finds his, tangles their fingers together.

“We’re here.” She takes strength from the words, draws it deep into her bones, repeats it until she can feel the ground beneath her, the air around her. “We’re here, we exist, we’re here.”

He squeezes her hand, and they lend each other their strength. In silence they sit, waiting for the sun to rise.

_vii._

They’d been at war since they landed, except now the battlefield was inside of him. He walks the crumbling edge between the calm and the storm, and sometimes he slips.

Today, it was something simple: they were lost.

He leaves the others to argue over the map and storms into the woods, only stopping when he’s certain they can’t hear him. Then he releases the rage that had been boiling under the surface all day—rage at the mission, which was failing; rage at his sister, who had left him; rage at himself, for never being enough—and pounds his fist into a tree, over and over. The pain of it shivers up his arm, but it’s not enough; it doesn’t touch the part of him that’s cold and dead and hollow.

So he strikes out again and again and again, because _goddammit_ , he’s so sick of feeling nothing, of feeling everything, of thinking and thinking and thinking—

“Bellamy!”

He turns and she’s there. He should have known she would be. Without asking, she takes his hand in hers. The knuckles are covered in blood, startlingly red; he takes comfort in its vibrancy, the visual reminder that he’s alive. The wounds are aching dully, pounding in time with his heart.

“You need to stop hurting yourself.” She has no bandages but her fingers move soothingly on his skin, rubbing circles into his palm.

“I need to feel something that’s not—” Drawing a deep breath, he searches for the right words.

She holds his hand, and she listens.

_viii._

“Everyone leaves me.” Words so quiet she almost misses them. “I try my best, but it’s never enough. I’m never enough.”

“You are enough. Bellamy, you are everything—” There are words in her heart but they get lost on the way to her tongue, and before she can find them again he’s pulling his hand from hers and turning away, wiping angrily at the dew that clings to his cheeks, blood from his knuckles painting his skin.

_He doesn’t believe her._ The realization crashes down upon her. He’d believed in her fragile plan to save the world, but he can’t believe her when it comes to _him_.

“Bellamy, listen to me—” He looks at her and his eyes are black as space, hollow and empty, and there’s nothing she can _say_ —

She kisses him. She kisses him like she’s asking a question: soft as the first few drops of rain, gentle as an evening breeze, warm as a distant flame.

For several unending heartbeats he’s hard and stiff and cold against her, and then something inside of him breaks. Suddenly it’s like being in a thunderstorm, a hurricane, a wildfire: encompassing, surrounding, consuming.

“You are enough.” She chants it against his lips, willing him to believe it. “You are enough, you are enough, _you are enough_.”

He doesn’t reply but maybe if she says it enough times, it’ll get written in his bones. An undying truth he can’t ignore.

_ix._

He’s chopping firewood. He finds a centre of balance in the swing of the axe, the thwack of it sinking into the wood, the burning in his muscles. A repetitive action that leaves no room for thoughts like cannonballs. A non-destructive release of energy.

“Bell?” The voice carries clearly on the morning air. He’d recognize it anywhere.

“O?” He turns and like an apparition she’s there, hair loose on her shoulders and empty sheath on her back, looking no less lost and broken than him.

Without warning she runs towards him, and he drops the axe seconds before she flings herself into his arms.

“I’m so sorry.” The words are mumbled into the crook of his neck. They vibrate on his skin, sink into his muscles. “He was my home, Bell, and I lost him, I lost myself, I didn’t know who I was anymore—” She’s crying, tears like rain soaking into his sweat-stained shirt.

He holds her. He forgives her.

_x._

She wakes to morning sunlight, filtered and softened through the fabric of the tent. Her sleep had been dreamless, and she feels well-rested, safe, warm. For the first time in a long time, she looks up at the walls of the tent and feels like she can breathe.

There’s a soft snore, and she remembers why.

Bellamy is sprawled next to her, one arm thrown over her stomach, legs entangled with hers. Charcoal hair smudged across his forehead, inky eyelashes drawing shadows on his cheeks, spattered freckles painted across his shoulders and the broad expanse of his back. He breathes deeply, evenly, the smallest of smiles sketched across his face.

Her heart swells, and she presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth before burying herself deeper in his arms.

There’s four and a half months until the end of the world, and doubtless there will be moments when they shatter, when they burn, when they turn to ice or feel like a storm; moments of hopelessness, helplessness, feeling lost, guilty, overwhelmed and alone.

Those are troubles that can wait another hour, another day. For now, she closes her eyes and allows herself this one small, fragile moment of peace.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr under the same username; feel free to come chat!


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